On December 11, the day after Parliament broke for Christmas holidays, Canada Post’s management announced that they plan to end home mail delivery. The bombshell announcement came as a complete shock to many.

Revealing another crack in the fragile foundation of the two-party system, voters in Lorain County, Ohio elected 24 Independent Labor Party candidates in local elections in December, out of 26 who ran. The election result was completely ignored by the major media outlets. Why? Because it shows that when offered an alternative fighting for the working class majority, with the numbers and resources of the unions behind to make it a viable option, working people will respond.

Local 1199 is a union made up of hospital and nursing home workers. It was founded by a member of the Communist Party and when it was first organized, it received a lot of support from Martin Luther King Jr. Today, 1199 is affiliated to SEIU (Service Employee International Union) and the gains of the union members are under attack. Socialist Appeal spoke about this with Sam Swartz, a Marxist and 1199 union delegate, who works in a Long Island nursing home.

McDonald’s is one of the most famous and richest companies on the planet. It has built a fast food empire of drive-thrus and burgers, and its owners live in immeasurable wealth. But its success has not coincided with the betterment of the lives of McDonald’s workers, and ultimately, that will be the undoing of all of the exploitation.

The struggle against transit cuts and union busting in Pittsburgh is now at a critical juncture. Since 2010, Democratic and Republican administrations at both the state and local level have been desperate to force the workers of Allegheny County to pay for the capitalist crisis by implementing devastating cuts to public transit and by attacking the transit workers’ union, ATU Local 85.